


Scrubs

by ntldr



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: EAGLE!, Tv shows watching other tv shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 10:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9231875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ntldr/pseuds/ntldr
Summary: Knockout loves human entertainment, but he hasn't yet found a show that scratches the itch for binge-watching quite like Scrubs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For one of my roommates, who needed more Knockout.

It took Knockout an absurdly long time to figure out that ‘General Hospital’ was in no way an accurate depiction of the human medical system. Or human culture. Or human interpersonal relationships. Or human actors. Or...anything having to do with this reality, really.

Primus, people watched this junk?!

Feeling more than a little foolish that he’d once again been bamboozled by the enigma that was Earth’s global computer network, he tried searching for medical shows with more “reality” in them. Paradoxically, these were even less believable than the soap operas. Humans mumbled out obviously rehearsed lines at one another, and then the camera would stay on the reactionary Dull Surprise of a second human before switching to a ‘confessional’ where they sat alone and spoke directly to the camera. Knockout had seen holograms with more substance than this.

The ‘Dr. Phil’ show was fun up until he realized that it wasn’t meant to be a comedy.

He had no desire to watch a documentary on the Anatomy of a Grey and skipped right past that one. 

‘Nurse Jackie’ was too depressing to be snarky.

‘House’ held his attention up for a while. And then a human’s optic sensor exploded.

‘M*A*S*H’ had been promising right up until he saw how old the vehicles being used were, and he assumed that the doctors were about the perform surgery with whittled sticks.

And just when he was about to give up and return to watching ‘Friends’ and find out if Ross was the baby’s father or not, he finally came across a little show called ‘Scrubs.’

Several months later found him slouched back in his chair in the Decepticon warship’s medbay during his off-time, a cube of energon rations in hand and his feet up on the desk as he watched the continuing antics of this mousse-haired doctor (Mousse? Moose? Did humans put pieces of dead animals in their hair?) and the rest of his friends on the console monitor. He nearly snorted up his energon at the sight of J.D. clinging to Dr. Cox’s car roof and screaming “Eagle!” as the other doctor barreled down the road.

If a human had done that to him, he would have eviscerated them. Several times.

Still, the show was entertaining, and oddly reminiscent of a time millions of years ago when Knockout had started to practice medicine. Not that he had been as clumsy as J.D. Not him. Not ever. 

...Yes, he’d left a laser scalpel inside someone’s engine once, but so what? Beginners made mistakes. That’s how they learned.

That’s what Ratchet had told him.

The more he watched Dr. Cox storming around the hospital, belittling and snarling at any other character that he came across, the bigger the grin on his face grew as he pictured Ratchet on the screen instead. This very well could be the human interpretation of the learning clinic where he’d been apprenticed under the Autobot medic. Dr. Cox was more mean-spirited than Ratchet and an ego-maniac, but he couldn’t chuck a wrench like him. There was a reason that all the other students showed more respect to Ratchet than to teachers like Pharma or Ambulon. 

Knockout had been slow to pick up on that Ratchet didn’t like anyone matching his brand of snark. By the time he’d figured that out, he was having too much fun to stop. The rest of the students were partly awed and partly horrified whenever the two of them went at it. There was a recording of one of their arguments circling the ship’s database somewhere.

That wasn’t to say that he didn’t respect Ratchet. The medic had built the foundation of everything Knockout knew about Cybertronian physiology, and he then expanded to teach his apprentice that there was far more to medicine than repairing a frame. Sealing up a torn energon line alleviated a patient’s terror only slightly; whatever had ripped into them could plague their mind long after they were injured. Repairs were only half of what they could do to return their patients to functionality, Ratchet had explained.

The other half bored Knockout. A pat on the back and well-wishes were not his style.

He still gave the console some of his attention. Something about The Todd and his anaconda? What was an ‘anaconda?’

Neither he nor Ratchet could stand patients who came in with the most menial, cosmetic problems. When Ratchet took an offer to move to an emergency clinic instead, his then-graduated apprentice had gone with him. Everything that Ratchet had tried to teach him about keeping patients calm, maintaining hope, and accepting when saving a life was no longer possible, suddenly Knockout was using all of that knowledge on himself instead. His hands tended to shake when he had the friends of a mech on his table screaming at the back of his head, snarling at him to work faster, to try something different, swearing up and down what would happen to him if the surgery failed. 

Knockout had nearly burned out early on in his career. But then Ratchet had stepped in again.

He told him that he already had a weapon to combat the terror and anger that permeated a busy emergency clinic.

...Knockout decided that he needed to show ‘Scrubs’ to Breakdown. If he was J.D., then Breakdown was Turk. He chuckled to himself at that.

It felt strange at first to take the most dire of situations with a dose of humor, but it worked. If a patient was alert when they came in, he’d tease them up and down about their paintjob. The more responsive they were to bad puns, the more likely they were to pull through. He kept himself smiling whenever possible, even if the jokes were grim. It stopped him from going insane.

He became more skilled. Never more skilled than Ratchet, of course. That old mech had another lifetime of experience ahead of him. Both of them moved up the ranks in the clinic, more likely to be pulled out of their office to work on VIPs than the common mech from off the streets. Once again they were seeing those with menial, cosmetic problems, and once again they agreed that it was time to move on.

Until the clinic became overwhelmed.

Riots were commonplace. Political entities were turning into warring factions. Cybertronians were picking fights with one another.

Cybertronians were killing each other.

Knockout’s optics narrowed at the screen. Something about Dr. Cox coming in to work drunk, but he wasn’t really watching it anymore.

He and Ratchet had returned to the lower wards of the emergency clinic. Where they once saw fragmented t-cogs and high-speed accidents, they now saw bullet wounds and weapon lacerations. And those, made purposely with the intent to kill? Those were harder to fix. They were losing more patients than they could save.

Knockout’s humor turned even darker. He pressed himself to keep going, but he knew that he was on the losing side. There was no winning this. Pit, other clinics taking care of Decepticons or Autobots exclusively were getting bombed by now. When would they be next?

And then he’d received an offer from Shockwave.

...He didn’t regret taking it. But leaving Ratchet’s side had been tough.

Ratchet had done all he could to make him stay. He’d appealed to what little honor he had, telling him that there were innocent mechs on the street who needed him far more than soldiers seeking to kill one another. He’d belittled him for choosing the side that, in his opinion, had started the civil war that was slowly encompassing the entire planet. He tried to bargain with him. He’d pleaded. He’d even smacked him with his good wrench a few times, “to knock some sense into him.”

But Knockout was done with being a loser.

He’d made other friends with the Decepticons. He was proud that he was fighting for a cause. Shockwave had allowed him to dive into the other Cybertronian sciences, saying that it would be logical for a top-rated medic to know more than just repairs. Knockout was enjoying himself again, and he hoped to continue his studies after the war ended and he’d have more time to leisurely explore the Archives.

...The end of the war never came.

Before Cybertron was evacuated, he ran into Ratchet one more time. Both the Autobot and Decepticon factions were clashing over some artifact at Tyger Pax. He’d joined the team planet-side, working as a field medic and making rapid patch-repairs before sending the soldiers right back into the fight. 

They’d all stopped at the sight of the All-Spark being rocketed off of the planet, lost to the stars. Shortly after it had disappeared, Megatron had dragged out the Autobot scout that he’d unsuccessfully been able to interrogate in time to stop the launch of the All-Spark, and ripped out his vocalizer, destroying the vital energon lines running to his head in the process. Knockout had automatically taken one step forward to assist the dying mech, then thought the better of it, and instead turned to leave with the rest of his squad.

He’d turned back when he heard Ratchet shouting the scout’s name.

The medic was there, now with an Autobot insignia on his chestplate. Knockout remembered swearing at his former mentor’s hypocrisy, and hoping that when, not if, when the scout died, Ratchet would give up and go back to the clinic, or join the Neutrals and escape the war.

Millions of years and a planet later, and the old medic still hadn’t given up. And neither had the scout.

They were on the losing side. They wouldn’t last much longer. He was already working on a list of puns he’d make about Ratchet when the medic finally kicked the bucket.

Knockout finished off the rest of his rations in one gulp, and smacked the cube down on his desk with more ire than he’d intended. The console rattled, and his attention returned to the screen.

The TV show had still been running while his mind had wandered.

J.D. was sitting with Dr. Cox at his apartment. The older doctor was wrapped up in a blanket, clearly depressed, and J.D. spoke up.

“I guess, after all this time, I still think of you as this, like, superhero that’ll help me out of any situation that I’m in. I needed that.”

Knockout paused and refreshed his optics.

“I guess... I came over here to tell you how proud of you I am.”

The Decepticon medic gave the monitor a long, hard stare.

And then he switched it off.

And then he deleted the queued links to the rest of the ‘Scrubs’ episodes that he’d saved on his console.

He was on the winning team. He couldn’t allow himself to doubt that.

He got up, pulled another ration out of the cabinet, settled back down in his chair, and scrolled through the other human TV shows that he had on his console.

He could find better shows than that drivel.

...Starscream had flagged a database called ‘Desperate Housewives?’ Hmm...

**Author's Note:**

> The episodes that Knockout was watching were "My Lunch" and "My Fallen Idol."


End file.
